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Billings firefighters challenge retirement in district court – Daily Montanan

['Darrell Ehrlick', 'More From Author', '- March']

Date: 2022-03-14 00:00:00

Billings Airport firefighters, along with the state’s firefighters association, is suing the Montana Public Employees Retirement Board for what it says is an arbitrary decision that deprives firemen of benefits while saving the City of Billings money.

The suit, which has been in process for more than a year, centers on whether firefighters who work at the Billings Logan International Airport, qualify as firefighters and should be included in the Firefighters United Retirement System, a separate retirement fund geared especially toward firefighting personnel with better benefits than the standard retirement benefit for other public employees.

All other firefighters in the City of Billings are part of the FURS system, with the airport firefighting personnel in less generous retirement category. The city has contested moving the airport firefighting personnel to the FURS system, arguing that because there is a difference in the medical tests administered that those firefighters are different. However, federal law requires firefighting personnel around-the-clock for commercial passenger flights, and state law doesn’t specify the types of medical tests or exams needed, the firefighters argue in court filings.

“The (PERS board) decided that the Airport Rescue Firefighters in Billings are not firefighters under Montana law because, although they receive a comprehensive medical exam, their exam does not include certain medical tests that are included in the medical exam administered to City of Billings firefighters – like a lipid test, for example,” court documents said.

The battle has bounced back-and-forth from state court to Public Employees Retirement Board, back to court where Lewis and Clark County District Judge Mike Menahan will decide whether the board came to the wrong conclusion by excluding the Billings airport firefighters from the firemen’s retirement fund.

The court had sent the case back to the PERS board for a definitive ruling that the airport firefighters didn’t meet the requirements, and twice the board said the differences made one set of firefighters eligible and not the other group.

Medical tests

The case could turn on whether the City of Billings’ decision to issue two different sets of tests for the firefighters means that the two groups are substantially different. However, Raph Graybill, the attorney representing the Montana State Firemen’s Association, told the PERS board and the district court that it is the city that decides the tests and the firefighters are willing to undergo identical tests.

The remainder of the firefighters employed by Montana’s largest city undergo slightly different tests and are part of the FURS retirement package.

Graybill told the court that Montana law does not require any specific medical tests to satisfy the requirements, and that the requirements that the City of Billings requires, while different than the tests administered to the other firefighters, exceed those set by law.

Graybill also argued that several times since the requirements were adopted by the Legislature that lawmakers have opted not to require any specific tests, allowing certain departments, cities and regions to decide what fits them best.

“The board’s decision was not only incorrect as a matter of law, it was also arbitrary and capricious because it lacked any reasoning, discussion, or analysis connecting the specific battery of tests with the generic requirements of the statute,” the court document said.

Furthermore, Graybill told the court that such a move means that PERS board, which administers state-employees pension plans, can look solely at the medical tests without any “regard to a firefighter’s title, service, or actual duties.”

Graybill said the decision doesn’t just stand to disadvantage firefighters at the Billings airport, it also sets a dangerous precedent in which cities and other government agencies could slightly change the tests and avoid paying into a more expensive retirement program.

“As it stands, the ruling allows local governments to evade the higher costs associated with FURS contributions by simply giving firefighters a different battery of tests – or more, likely pointing out that firefighters in Great Falls, or Butte, or Anaconda, or Glendive or Helena, did not receive this specific battery of tests that MPERA now says hold the key, under state law to whether a firefighter can participate in FURS,” Graybill told the court. “In effect, it authorizes local governments to modify, unilaterally, the eligibility criteria for FURS – something that state law expressly prohibits.”

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